


Prologue: The Seraph Projection

by a_LivewareProblem



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Minor Character Death, Post-Order 66, Prologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25937236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_LivewareProblem/pseuds/a_LivewareProblem
Summary: A clone and an Imperial officer revisit the day of Order 66.#####A prologue for a longer story I am currently writing. I try to avoid posting until I've completed a first draft but wanted to throw out the prologue chapter to see if there's any feedback.
Kudos: 1





	Prologue: The Seraph Projection

One of the lucky ones. That’s how Roller thought of himself. He’d made it. Survived to the end of the war where thousands of his brothers hadn’t. And more importantly in his opinion, survived what had come afterwards.

Casualty reports had once declared their sacrifice with sombre fanfare across the Holonet - ten thousand at Mandalor, eighteen thousand above Corosant, eleven thousand at Geonosis. But once the war was over and the battle statisticians and propaganda chiefs had gone home, no one was left keeping score. No one cared enough to.

Polus had met his end a week after the battalion was disbanded - beaten to death in a bar fight gone wrong. Flash and Helo had that run in with the Hutts not long afterward. Yimi went merc for Black Sun and got shot in the back on his first job. Then the rest of his squad that had redeployed within the Empire had been wiped out in the Gorse incident a couple of years ago.

That had left four from Red Steel squad. Leo and Hightop, who had both gone their own way in the night without a word, Roller, and Nines. Nines had been the oldest by a long way, a generation one clone who had seen some of the biggest battles in the war. Roller had been the only one to attend the burial last year after the old sergeant had been found dead in his cot at the veterans centre on Heffan, mercifully taken in his sleep at the ripe age of twenty six.

Their makers had done their job well with this accelerated ageing stuff. Getting the Republic’s army out of its diapers, on its feet and into the fight fast enough to combat the endlessly manufactured legions of droids the Separatists had hurled at them; a true marvel of biology and military strategy.x

Now as the years drew on, Roller had the feeling that marvel was coming to bite him on his twenty three and a half year old, grey haired, blaster scored ass.

Still, he was definitely one of the lucky ones.

Next to him his beacon let out a low ping, bringing him out of the brief half-doze against the rock wall he had permitted himself.

Good. His payday was here.

The old clone picked his rifle up from where he had propped it against the wall, slung the strap over his shoulder and stepped out of the relative shelter of the cave. The wind shoved him hard but his feet were planted and he stood straight, scanning the horizon through the visor of his battered old trooper helmet.

A hundred meters below him a ruddy orange desert stretched endlessly, a sea of windswept dunes that had been whipped around this dustball of a planet for as long as anyone could remember. The sands stopped at the foot of the mountain range, a wall of red and orange stone peaks stretching to the horizon on Roller’s left and right. But like a grindwheel, the desert was slowly, patiently, advancing forward. A line of scree and fallen mountaintops marked the boundary between the range and the dunes, gradually being swallowed up under more great humps of sand. He wondered how long it would before the outcropping he stood on would erode and fall into the desert below, becoming more ammunition for the winds to hurl at the mountainsides.

A black dot bracketed by twin solar panels appeared on the horizon, resolving into the shape of an Imperial TIE and travelling very fast and very low for the conditions. He frowned at the shape as it sped toward him. Someone really didn’t want to risk getting tracked...

The TIE fighter screeched to an abrupt halt above the outcrop, wavering in the winds for a few seconds before touching down and engaging landing clamps. It took a few minutes before the lid popped open and for its passenger in Imperial pilots uniform and helmet to climb out. The pilot pulled a black holdall from the TIE, slung it over his shoulder and jumped down, walking toward Roller with an arm raised against the wind.

“Corporal Roller. Glad to meet you at last,” The male human voice came over the near-field comms, rather than being yelled through the thin sand laden atmosphere. If he was truly glad to meet the clone, his tone conveyed no such sentiment.

“Lieutenant Helbe,” Roller replied over the comms, switching on his helmet mic. “Just Roller is fine for me thanks - got to be in an army for the rank to matter,”

“The Imperial Army is still your army corporal. How else would I have found you?” The pilot replied and Roller rolled his eyes behind his visor. Imperials can never take a joke. Helbe reached into the holdall and pulled out a small bar of metal, silvery and marbled with dark strands over its surface. “Your payment, as requested,”

Roller took the bar and passed it over a small scanner to confirm its composition before tucking it into his chestplate. He had been very specific with his desired renumeration for this job - beskar ingots had a far more…resilient value than say, a credit chip. He trusted Imperials as far as far as he could throw them and though he was pretty sure he’d be able to hurl this runty looking Lieutenant a fair way, he wasn’t going to risk having the Empire deprive him his payday.

“And the rest when we’re done?” Roller said

“As we’ve agreed,” Helbe said. Good, he wasn’t a haggler at least.

“Come on then. Let’s take a walk. Oh, you’re going to want to keep your helmet on. The dust here is mostly silica and lung washes really aren’t fun,” Roller said and turned toward the mouth of the cave. The hole in the mountain was easily large enough to fly the TIE fighter through but quickly narrowed down to a passage two men high and four across. The cave walls were a darker red than the outside face of the mountain, not yet facing the full force of the desert. Any sand that had blown into the cave had collected in drifts at the edges that at times they had to clamber over or through . After about fifty meters, the cave began to curve down and the light from the cave mouth quickly faded, forcing them both to light the torches on their blasters.

“I could have saved you the journey you know. A bag and tag wouldn’t have cost you much more,” Roller said. They had been walking for some time now, taking forks and scrambling past rockfalls as the caves began to intersect and become more labyrinthine. This was why Roller had been tracked down and hired. Navigating these largely unmapped caves with no guide was at best a waste of time, at worst, suicide.

“You would have contaminated my samples,” Helbe replied, voice as dry as the dust that still danced in their torchlights even this far inside the mountain.

“Fair enough. Hey, at least I’m getting a trip down memory lane,” Roller shrugged.

“And fifty thousand credits worth of Mandalorian steel,”

“Well, that is a plus. And it’s more like seventy five,” Roller said, grinning. He could practically hear Helbe’s teeth grinding inside his helmet - oh, how he had missed winding up a superior officer. “Me and the boys spent a lot of time in these caves. There was major refuelling post for the old Republic at Toshley’s Station about sixty clicks north of here. Had to deal with clankers trying to sneak in to crash the party all the time,”

“Evidently you failed. I saw the wreckage of the station as I came in,” Helbe said.

“Nope, that was the Empire. They scuttled the place after the war. Not cost effective last I heard,”

“The Empire doesn’t waste time on relics of past times unless they serve a purpose,” Hilbe said, the reflective eyes of his helmet meeting the clone’s.

“Oh don’t say that Lt, you’re hurting my feelings,” Roller chuckled, letting the insult roll off his armour while internally imagining a blaster bolt melting through that black plastoid faceplate.

They turned another fork and here the walls began to change, no longer smooth red stone but becoming blackened and pockmarked with blaster fire. As they walked on, the blast patterns became more frequent until the cave abruptly ended, only a long thin slot in the rock running from floor to ceiling offering a route forward. This slot, barely wide enough for one human to slide through, was ringed by what had to be hundreds of blaster scores, so many the wall was black and glassy in places where the stone had been melted and cooled over and over.

“This is where…” Hilbe said, running his hand over the blackened stone.

“We managed to corner them here. Put up one nasty fight,” Roller said and cast his eye over the almost dead-end, standing in the same spot he had a decade ago. This is where Wheeze and Bolt had bit it, one decapitated, the other skewered through the chest like a game beast.

“I see,” Hilbe stepped back from the blaster scores, looking around on the floor. “How did they die?”

“You’ll see,” Roller said and walked up to the slot, turning sideways and doing his best to draw in his gut. He wasn’t the lithe thirteen year old trooper he once was and it took nearly two minutes of grunting and swearing for him to slide through the slot and stumble into the space beyond.

It was a dead end, a rockfall twenty or so meters further on creating a sealed antechamber. It was just as he and the boys had left it ten years ago when they had slid though blasters drawn to confirm their kill. The lieutenant emerged through the slot not long after and stared around, turning on the spot.

“What-“

“They might be able to bat back blaster fire all day long but thermal detonators seem to do the trick,” Roller said matter of factly, pointing round at the blasted, fractured rock. “We rolled twenty two detonators in here through that slot. Guessed they couldn’t Force all of them back out at us. Miracle the ceiling didn’t cave in to be honest,”

“This is…where are they? I don’t see anything,” Hilbe asked, casting around. The everything in here was so scorched and blackened Roller didn’t blame him for missing what it was he was actually here to see.

“Well, you’re standing on one of them,” Roller said and pointed his light at Hilbe’s feet. The lieutenant looked down and leapt back with a yell, crunching more burnt black bones under his boots until he pressed himself against the wall. He was shivering, breath hissing fast and shallow through his microphone as he stared at the blasted apart twi’lek skeleton on the floor.

“Yeah, hadn’t been much left of her,” Roller said grimly. “The boy is over there,”

Roller pointed at the opposite wall, just before the rockfall that ended the cave. Hilbe walked slowly up to the bones, his circle of torchlight trembling as his hands shook. The small human bones were just as blackened and burnt as the stone they rested on but were more complete, the body laying where the young apprentice had died while his master had been blasted apart in a final desperate defence. Hilbe knelt down next to the body and forced a long, shuddering breath through his lungs.

“First time seeing a corpse?”

Hilbe only nodded slowly. He reached down into the bones and carefully lifted something from the ashes. The emitter had been blasted apart, but the lightsaber was mostly intact. Through the cracks in the metal Roller thought he could see a pale green glow.

Hilbe’s fist closed over the hilt, blocking the light inside.

“I’d like to think he was gone before we threw in the detonators. We…we tried to make it quick for him. But he fought so damn hard…like we’d taught him…” Roller muttered, feeling a cold, dark pit opening in his gut. A realisation that hadn’t occurred until now and had been held back by something that was now absent.

“I think…uh…I’m going to…” Hilbe started, his mouth suddenly dry as memories trickled back from behind whatever barrier had just failed. Coming here had been a mistake. It had been so long ago he thought it would be just like a tour of any other battlefield he’d walked off but this was different. This had been an execution.

He wanted to leave. He had to get out of this place and never return but his feet were lead and his head pounded.

They’d killed a child. A little boy who only wanted to be a Jedi when he grew up and protect the galaxy. Happy, smiling Kay who they had carried on their shoulders the first time he had beaten them all through the assault course. Shared food with when the rations got low. Watched train with his master day after day no matter how tired he was. Cared for him like a brother and been cared for in return.

And they’d _murdered_ him.

“You had your orders. There’s no need for your emotion trooper.”

Roller blinked behind his visor, his eyes wet.

“I…yes…just following orders,” Roller shook himself, his head clearing. “Good soldiers follow-“

“This will all be very helpful to us,” Hilbe continued, his cool tone cutting across him. He was still kneeling over the bones and was strangely still. He placed the ruined lightsaber back on the ground carefully . “The Empire thanks you for your service corporal,”

His sudden jump to his feet and flash of light from the torch was enough to startle the clone, but it wasn’t good enough to disguise Hilbe’s attempted quickdraw of his blaster. Roller folded himself backwards completely on reflex, the blaster bolt meant for his chest buzzing over his helmet and into the wall behind. The butt of his rifle was already in the crook of his shoulder and half a second after he had hit the floor he had flicked the safety, sighted, and blasted the traitors Imperial bastard in the left leg with a perfectly aimed double tap. Hilbe’s scream was deafening over the comm as he toppled and a few more wild blaster shots peppered the ceiling, showering them with sharp stone fragments. Roller leapt up, kicked away the blaster that had nearly sunk a hole in his chest and trained his own rifle on back of Hilbe’s head.

“Next time you’re going to double cross someone, save the melodrama until after you’ve shot them!” Roller panted, winded from his impact with the floor, adrenaline really pumping for the first time in years, every instinct in his body telling him to blow Hilbe’s brains out here and now. Then no one would know what had happened here. He could forget again.

Rational thought kicked in first…barely. Killing an Imperial officer was going to leave a loose end, one the Empire almost certainly trace back to him. Flight plans for the TIE, comms logs, anyone this slime ball had talked to before leaving.

Shit.

“Now, scum, this is what is going to happen. I’m taking my pay. Then I’m hauling your treacherous hide back to your TIE and what happens after that is entirely up to you. But if I ever see or hear you again, I swear by the stars I will skin you alive. Do you understand me?”

Hilbe squirmed on the floor, crawling on his belly away from the rifle like an insect under a pin, his pathetic sniffling filling the veteran soldier’s helmet.

“I want to hear the words scum. SAY YOU UNDERSTAND!” Roller roared, ripping off the pilot’s helmet and yanking him up by the throat to ram the blaster’s smoking muzzle under his chin, searing the skin.

Hilbe glared back at him, a round face contorted into a mask of rage and pain, sandy blonde hair and dark green bloodshot eyes.

“Wait…“

This time the clone didn’t see it coming.

Hilbe twisted like a snake in his grip, the pointed lump of rock that had been hidden in his fist swinging up like a hammer into the side of Roller’s helmet. The old plastoid shell cracked and Roller’s vision winked out for a moment.

He blinked a few times…he was on the floor…why was he on the floor?

And why could he taste blood?

CRACK

A blow smacked into the forehead plate of the helmet, a bit more armour compared to the side but it was still like being hit with a meteorite. He raised his arms, trying to protect himself but the rock in Hilbe’s gloved hands swung towards him.

CRACK

“DIE!” Hilbe screamed, spit flying from his mouth as it twisted into a manic leer. He was enjoying this. “Die like a good soldier!”

Roller lashed out with boots and fists, hitting a few soft spots but not with enough strength.

CRACK

He tried to roll away. Got dragged back. Hilbe drove his knee into Roller’s throat, pinning him.

CRACK

The helmet split in two down the middle and was torn away. His own eyes now looking directly up at Hilbe’s tear streaked, murderous face.

Well brothers…looks like my luck has fina-


End file.
